Located slightly to the right of center screen is a box
called mp3 Folder. Navigate to where
you keep your mp3 files and double click that folder. After locating your
folder, also right click it to save that folder to your Favorite mp3 Folders box. With sqmp3Gold, you can have your mp3
files in many different folders. As long as you remember to right click that
folder and add the folder to your Favorite mp3 Folders, the program will know
where to search for the files you select.

Once you have selected your mp3 folder, you will notice the
box to the far bottom right of the screen will be propagated with all the files
in that folder.

Notice in the upper left hand corner of the mp3 files box, the number of mp3 files
in your folder will be shown. (5974 in my case).

Before we add to our favorite singers and patter boxes, find
the box to the left of the screen called favorites
and right click it.

There you should see 5 choices. Select New and choose a
favorite filename. What we are doing here is getting ready to setup favorites for
Friday night, or Summer Festival, or even perhaps Sting favorites. For now,
name your file practice.

Now from your mp3 files, drag and drop to your hearts
content to your favorite singer and favorite patter boxes.

.

It is suggested to turn off the Sorted checkbox during the Drag
and Drop process as with it checked, the program will warn you each time
you add a file that you will destroy your unsorted order. So uncheck the Sorted checkbox. Also, by doing so, you
will be able to add your favorites in the order in which you would like to play
the song. In the event you would like to see a Sorted list, simple check the box whenever you like. The program
will automatically remember whether you want the box sorted or not when you
restart the program in the future.

You may also Drag and Drop files
from Singer to Patter and Patter to Singer, and you, of course can have a song
listed in both boxes.

To play a song, simply double click the song from any of the
3 boxes (Favorite Patter, Favorite Singer, or mp3 Files).

Also, if you single click a song from the Favorite Patter
and single click a song from the Favorite Singer, it will cue them up.

And it will give information about the mp3 file in the File Info box (center right screen)

One of the reasons that this information is important to us
is that we may have recorded the song twice. If we are going to put effects on the song (tempo and pitch),
it is better to use the song that was recorded using the highest frequency and
the best sample rate. (22050 is not a good selection
to tweak. 44100 is better.)

Now that you have the songs cued, you have another option
(besides using your mouse to double click). If it is the cued patter record you
want to start, just hit the spacebar.
Hitting the spacebar again will stop the song. Also F1 will start and stop the
song. Notice, too, that when using the spacebar or F1 to start and stop songs,
the timer (top right) will reset.

Similarly, hit Control-spacebar to start and stop the cued
singer. (Actually, you can stop the singer with the spacebar too.) Once a song
has started, it will be added to the current
song box

The different between spacebar and F1 is that the spacebar will
play the Cued Patter. F1 will play the Current Song! (There is a difference)

F2 is similar to F1. It will play the Current Song and it
will stop play. However, when you hit F2 again, it will resume playing the song
(from the point at which it was stopped) and it will not reset the timer.

Another thing to note: When you hit the spacebar, if a song
is playing it will stop the song and record all the effects to disk. This
includes speed, pitch, EQ, trackmarks, etc.

If you stop the song using Control-spacebar, the settings
will not be saved. This is a feature, not
a bug.

When you start a singing call, in the Counter box, you will
find what sequence you are on.

Playing a patter to the end

When you play a patter mp3, you may decide that you don’t
want it to loop, but would rather let it play to the end. Hit Control-e (or F7)
and the counter will display: Playing to
end. In the event that you change your mind, hit Control-e (or F7) again to
cancel. If the song has played beyond the end
loop mark, it will jump to the beginning of the loop.

After starting an mp3 file from either the patter favorites
or singer favorites, the filename will be highlighted in yellow (default)
signifying that you have used that patter or singer. If you decide not to
follow through with playing that song, simply right click the song to reset the
color to its original state. At the beginning of a dance, if you would like to
clear all the yellow marks, go to the menu under
history and click clear. There you can, also, change the color of the
highlighted items (background) and the font color of those items.

sqmp3Gold has the ability to check
for updates provided that your computer is connected to the internet. Click the
menu item called Updates and the
sub-menu item called Manually Check
Internet for Update if you want to check to see what version is available
on the server. Select Automatic Update
if you want sqmp3Gold to do the work for you.

One of the most significant advancements in computer audio
technology is the ability to change the tempo
without changing the pitch and vice
versa. Sqmp3Gold allows you to do this is real-time
with singing calls. There are so many records that are just a little too
high and occasionally some that are even too low. All these records are now in
your key! There are 3 ways to change the pitch of a song: simply move the
slider called pitch scaling, use F5 and F6, orfind these items
on the menu.

These controls will adjust the music by semitones. (Each
number corresponds to a note on the piano… including the black ones. There are 12
semitones per octave.) Although sqmp3Gold allows you to change the pitch by
+30/-30 semitones, you will find that a + or – 5 is as much as you would want
to stretch the song. Therefore, if a song is exactly a half an octave too high
(or low) for you, forget it; choose another song.

Similarly, if you would like to change the tempo of a song,
move the Tempo slider to the left or
right the desired amount, use the F3
and F4 keys, or find them on the
menu. Changing the samplerate is the same as changing
both the pitch and the tempo together.

If you hit the spacebar to stop a song, whatever Tempo or Pitch settings are showing at the time will be associated with the
current song. Each time you replay the song, the same settings will appear
automatically. Be aware that changing the
samplerate cannot be memorized and associated with a
song!

When selecting a song from the favorite patter box, you only
have the ability to change the tempo. This will also change the pitch. That is
the bad news. The good news is that because of this, we can have perfect
looping.

When you change the speed and pitch (frequency) to effect
the BPM by 1, (example: 125 BPM to 126 BPM), the frequency will change 14
cents. There are 100 cents per semitone. If you have perfect pitch, you will be
able to distinguish a note by 20-30 cents. Therefore, if you change the BPM by
1, nobody will hear the change. If you change the BPM by 2, very few people will
hear the change. I think this a great trade-off for having perfect looping. We
can’t have both.

The equalizer is
a new feature for sqmp3Gold. It comes with 5 presets:

Bass

Mid

Treble

Default

Flat

User

You can also design your own setting. First, move the Bass,
Mid and Treble sliders to the desired positions. Then click in the dropdownbox (where it says Flat)
and type in your desired name for the preset. Hit enter and your preset will be
written to memory and be available each time you use the program (until you hit
the delete key if you want to get rid of it). By using the equalizer, you can
enhance poorly recorded music. If you hit the spacebar to stop a song, whatever
EQ setting is showing at the time will be associated with the current song. Each
time you replay the song, the same settings will appear automatically.

The science of determining BPM is not perfect. Sometimes
this will yield not so perfect results. A very large percentage of the time, it
is very accurate. Now, in sqmp3Gold, the BPM is calculated “on-the-fly”.

You’ll notice that there are 2 BPM counters. With a singing
call, the one to the left calculates the BPM of the song 30 seconds into the
song and comes up faster than the one on the right. The one on the right
calculates the BPM every 10 seconds. It becomes quite evident whether the music
is played by live musicians or is “canned” in a midi studio, as the live
musicians BPM will jump all over the place and the midi music will remain
relatively constant. When playing a patter, the BPM indicator to the left is
the recorded BPM and the one to the right is the current BPM value based on
adding the recorded BPM plus the tempo slider.

BPM is a very complicated science and therefore the BPM
indicator sometimes doesn’t show the right number or any number at all. This is
normal. I won’t go into the details of audio technology (probably because I
can’t), but suffice to say, if this BPM calculator is correct most of the time,
it is pretty cool! Depending on the music you play, you should expect 1 song
out of 100 to fool the BPM calculator. If you ever see the BPM indicator
showing exactly ‘125’, the BPM calculator probably failed; the field was
automatically filed in by the program.

The BPM override will take each song you play and change the
tempo slider to try to match the desired BPM. In this way, if you decide that
the group you are calling for needs to dance 125 BPM, all of the songs you play
will be close to that. Also, of course, if your songs have been recorded at
different BPM, this will play them all at the same BPM without you having to
set each one individually. Sometimes it might be good to set your BPM at one
speed for the beginning of a dance, another speed for the middle of the dance
and yet another for the end of the dance!

The installation program that comes with sqmp3Gold should
put a link on the desktop for you. In the event that you clean your desktop and
your original link disappears, you can restore that link with the following
menu item.

The backup and restore feature gives you the opportunity to
backup the files that have been made by you when running the program. These
files are located in the ini and favorites folders.
Use this if you have a fresh installation on your notebook computer and want
the favorites, track marks, colors, and folders to be the same on both
machines. Also in the event that something goes wrong with your computer, you
will be able to restore the program back to its last saved state.

There are 2 things you need to tell the computer: what drive
would you like to backup to (or restore from) and whether you want to backup or
restore. The files are kept in a folder called sqmp3gold backup.

For those of you who like to record the dance you’re calling
(and perhaps sell the mp3s), sqmp3Gold allows you to record the dance on your
computer at the same time you’re using it to play the mp3s! You simply take a
cord from your Hilton (high for line in, low for mic…
depends on which Hilton), and plug it into the line/mic
input on the computer, just as you would a tape recorder or MD for recording.

Click record on the menu and you will get the following
screen.

First select the
source. (I have selected Wave Out Mix. Your source
may vary as it depends on the soundcard as to what you see in this box.) Next
click Filename and change this to
what you like (Friday Plus
Dance as an example). I would suggest you slide the bottom slider all the way to the right. This
is the volume level. Start the music and click record. What you will first see, in all probability, is the volume
slide decreasing to an appropriate level. This is the auto level feature of sqmp3Gold. If the slider goes all the way to
the left, your signal may be too strong. However, to check it, click Stop Rec. (same button) and then Play to hear the
file you just recorded. All files recorded will be places in a folder called Recorded Dance which is located under the
main folder of sqmp3Gold. Each time you hit record, the filename you chose will
be automatically incremented: Friday Plus
Dance1, Friday Plus Dance2. In this way, you can record each tip
separately.

As much as I don’t like to use my mouse (touchpad) at a
dance, the F8 key will turn off and on the recorder.

You might ask, “How will I know it is on”. When the recorder
is on, it will turn the clock red. When it is off, the clock returns to normal.
Therefore, you don’t need to have the recorder box showing to record. Just use
F8 and notice whether the clock is red or normal (on or off).

We have to have a use for the old Hilton reset. With
sqmp3Gold, and a special cord, we can plug it into the serial port of the
computer and control some features of sqmp3Gold. (If you don’t have a serial
port, you can get a USB to serial converter.) Directions for making the plug
can be found on the menu under Remote
and Making the Cord. You can also
purchase a cord from sqmp3.com for $20 US.

Once you have the cord and it is connected to the Hilton
Reset and the computer, click Remote,
on the main menu and on.

Under the same menu you can select a port. Sqmp3Gold will automatically list the available port from
which you can choose.

Then you have 3 choices as to how the reset button will
behave:

classic Hilton reset

toggle start/stop (Default)

toggle stop/resume

the classic
Hilton reset will reset the song to 15 seconds after the beginning

the toggle
start/stop will act as the F1 key does; reset to beginning of the song and
reset the timer

the toggle
stop/resume will act as the F2 key does; stop and resume without resetting
the timer

One of the more significant advances in square dance calling
technology is the ability to have contiguous loops in our music; the ability to
seamlessly loop a patter so that the dancers don’t have to change their footing
when the “record” resets. Sqmp3Gold allows you to do that. In fact, sqmp3Gold
allows you to make a perfect loop. I said perfect, and I mean perfect.

From the main menu, select Looping. There you will see the following:

As it was with the MD player, we want to set our loops on the
downbeat and on the first beat of a measure. If we count 1, 2, 3, 4 with the
music, we want to set the loop on 1. Not
on 3 ½ or just before 1, but on 1.

As we listen to the music, and we get to the place where we
want to start the loop, click the Start button.

Using the “>” button, move forward to a point in the song
where we want to place the end trackmark. Hit the
button End when you find the first
beat of the measure toward the end of the song. If you find a part of the song
that is identical to the first part of the song (example: start of the 1st
figure and the start of the 4th figure), your loop should be
perfect. If it is a little off, you will hear, for a 2 second period, what
seems to be 2 songs playing simultaneously. Using the “<” button you can
adjust the loop in increments of .01 seconds.

You can use the *** button to jump to the end of the loop to
test the loop.

Notice, too, that as with the other controls on the screen,
when you hover your mouse over the control, it displays
a hint for that control. In this case it says, “5 seconds from end of loop”.

The music will jump to 5 seconds before the end of loop so
that you can hear the loop you created. After it plays the loops, click the *** again. It is a good idea to wait 5
seconds before clicking the *** button. This will allow the song to fully load
into memory.

In the event you find that the positions you selected to
start and end the loop just doesn’t work, but you feel that you nailed the
loop, try using the Change Both Start
and End buttons. Here you can adjust the start and end loop positions
forward and backwards at the same time. Most of the time, this feature is not
needed.

Now that we have a loop for that song, click Looping from the main menu to make the
looping box disappear. Each time you play a song from your “favorite patter”, the program will set the loop to your saved settings and
show you where the song is going to loop in the Counter box (below).

In the event that you have never made a loop for the patter
record you are playing, sqmp3Gold will automatically set the start loop to 15 seconds after the song
begins and it will set the end loop
to 15 seconds before the song finishes.

If you decide that you want to let the song play to the end, hit Control-e.

One of the most important things to do when first arriving
at the Lyrics page is to navigate to the folder of your lyrics (using left
clicks), then right click it to add
it to your favorite lyrics folder file.

You will then be presented with the following screen. Choose
yes to add this folder to your Favorite Lyrics Subdirectory (Folder). By
repeating this to other folders, you can have as many folders for lyrics as you
like.

Sqmp3Gold has the ability to marry specific lyrics to your
mp3 file. Simply play an mp3 file, hit F12. Select the lyric (in the event that
sqmp3Gold didn’t do it for you) and right click the lyric. You will be asked if
you want to marry that lyric to the current mp3 file. You should answer “I do”
to marry the lyric, or “Divorce” to remove the previously saved marriage. Now
when you play an mp3 file and hit F12, your lyric will be displayed instantly.
Take care in marrying your files; sqmp3Gold will marry the file and the folder in which the files
reside. In the event that you change your lyrics (or mp3) files to another
folder, the marriage will be lost.

Once an mp3 file and lyric have been married, you can also
play the mp3 file by double clicking the lyric.

We receive our Lyrics from so many different sources, that
the names may not match. In the example where the mp3 file is called Crazy – GMP 1006.mp3 and the lyric file
is called Crazy – Global Music1006.mp3.
It would be very difficult for the program to match this mp3 with this lyric.
This is another place where marrying lyrics to mp3 files will be useful. Also
note that if you marry a lyric to an mp3 file, the Lyrics page with come up
immediately.

Callerlab
Lists and Definitions

There are tabs on the lyrics page that can be useful if you
read choreography or singing call figures.

Simply open the file you would like to view, and navigate to
that page by clicking the tab with your mouse or by hitting the 0-9 keys on you
keyboard. Next to the filename, you will see a number for fast access to that
page. As an example, if you are playing a singing call (lyrics are always zero
on the quick keys) and you need the lyrics for the song, and you also are
calling A1 and are reading figure sequences, you may hit the zero key to view
the lyrics and the 1 key for the choreography. You can toggle between these to
at your heart content.